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I wouldnt buy them again

When me and my husband first moved into our house nearly 4 years ago we had to buy pretty much everything including all of the bedroom furniture. We had decided to use my old bedroom furniture set in our spare room but purchase a new set for our room, we didn't want anything ridiculously expensive as we had so much to buy but wanted something that would last us a while so we went for the Vancouver Furniture Set from Argos, this is a mix and match set and one of the items we went for was the Vancouver 5 + 2 Draw Chest in Pine, we went for this as we wanted a tall set of draws at the bottom of our bed for when we purchased a TV for the room, this was ideal and also gave us a lot of draw space at the same time.

The Vancouver 5 + 2 Draw Chest came flat packed in a plain cardboard box, I think it may have had the name of it but that was pretty much it from what I can remember, inside the box all of the pieces of the chest were wrapped in plastic to help protect them and stop them from becoming damaged, there was also a small plastic bag inside which contained all of the fittings, the handles were also individually wrapped again for protection, I have to say I was quite pleased with how the chest of draws arrived as a lot of flat packed furniture arrives just chucked in a box and could easily get damaged, however this set was well protected.

As I have mentioned the chest of draws comes flat packed, the information stated that one person could put this together alone, personally I think you probably could manage alone, although it would be a bit tricky trying to hold things together whilst putting the screws in place, I would say that it is easier to put it together with two people so that one person can hold the various parts together while the other one screws in the screws, I would say that while you need two people to put the main frame together one person could put the draws together alone. With two of you putting the chest of draws together doesn't really take too long as it is quite easy and there are not too many parts to it, the draws I think take the longest as there are 7 of these in total, however these are not overly complicated at all.

All of the fittings come with the chest of draws and from what I can remember there are no spares so as long as you have nothing left at the end you have done it right. There are some instructions inside the box, these include the different steps involved in putting the chest together and a check list to make sure you have everything you need, as with a lot of flat pack sets the instructions are not the most detailed and consist of a series of diagrams, we did sort of use the instructions especially for the frame but to a certain extent work it out for ourselves as it was easier than trying to figure out what the instructions were trying to tell us.

Once assembled the Chest measures 108cm (H) 75cm (W) and 40cm (D), it does stand quite tall but not so tall that you cannot use the top of the draws should you wish, we used ours to stand our TV on and it was the perfect height to watch when laying in bed.

The whole structure is a rectangle shape and the draws literally go from edge to edge, there is no border around the edge of the frame, the 5 large draws take up the majority of the chest and sitting on top of these are two small draws each half the size of the large draws, all of the draws sit on metal runners and can be removed should you wish, I personally like this with a chest of draws as it makes it easier to tighten anything up should you need to as time goes on.

All of the draws had long thing silver coloured handles, these were not the most stylish but didn't look too bad once in place, all of the draws had hardboard bases to them which in my opinion are not the strongest, however a lot of furniture comes like this now and should they start to bow you can always screw small blocks underneath the draws to help support the base but so that they cannot be seen when the draw is open, we have done this several times with various sets of draws and it has worked perfectly.

The Vancouver 5 + 2 Draw Chest comes in various colours including * Maple * Beech * Pine * Wenge * White We went for pine in our bedroom as we felt this went best with our colour scheme, the shade was ok, not the best shade of pine in the world but once put together with all the other pieces of furniture in the set it really didn't look too bad at all.

As I have mentioned the Vancouver 5 + 2 Draw Chest came from Argos, we ordered ours online and had it delivered. I cannot remember what we paid for the chest at the time, however it is now sold for £114.99, I think we paid a little bit less that this when we bought ours nearly 4 years ago. At the time I didn't think it was too bad value for money as some of the other similar items that were available were a lot more expensive, obviously we needed to see how long the furniture lasted before we decided whether it was worth what we paid for it.

When we first assembled the Chest and put it in place me and my husband did think they felt a little unstable but we put that down to the floors maybe not being perfectly level.

To start with we were pleased with the draws, the 5 large draws gave us plenty of room for our clothes and I used the 2 smaller draws for my hair stuff and make up. After a little while the bottoms of the two smaller draws began to bow, I wasn't too concerned about this and we stuck them in place and put small supports under them which worked perfectly, however just a few months after we assembled the chest of draws it began to fall apart and was very wobbly, I contacted the customer services department and was sent a replacement, this did take a long while to happen as they were out of stock which I wasn't too pleased about as I was left with a very wobbly chest of draws which to be honest didn't seem safe, there was always the worry of were they going to collapse when you used them they became that unstable. However the new set arrived and we were pleased with them again, but just a year later exactly the same thing happened, the whole frame started to fall apart and become unstable again, I was so fed up with the chest of draws at this point that we really couldn't be bothered to get a third replacement, and to be honest after the second set started to fall apart I really didn't want the furniture in our bedroom as the 5 + 2 Chest of Draws really wasn't safe, in the end we ended up breaking up the chest of draws throwing it away and brought a whole new furniture set for our bedroom.

I would not recommend this particular chest of draws at all, they are of a poor quality and to be perfectly honest are not safe, that could quite easily have been in a child's room and should they have collapsed it would have been dangerous. I definitely will not be buying anything from their range again and would advise others not to either.